PHOTO QUALITY. This 16-megapixel point-and-shoot camera captured images with very good quality. We judged this model very good for outdoor performance, such as shooting landscapes in the daytime; good for indoor performance, such as photographing a well-lit basketball game in a gym; very good for performance under natural light without a flash, such as shooting under an overcast sky.
FLASH. The Coolpix S7000 captured flash shots that were good. In our distance test, we found the camera's flash could illuminate most subjects that are closer to the camera, but had some problems with distant subjects. The flash also has good, relatively even coverage.
LENS. It has a very long 20x zoom lens that can be great for travel and sports shooting when you need to zoom in far to capture your subjects. The lens also has very wide-angle (25mm) capability that's very useful for landscapes and group portraits, although you may notice a bit of distortion when you're shooting faces up close, for instance.
IMAGE STABILIZER. This is an important feature with a long zoom lens; taking hand-held shots at the telephoto end of the zoom range can generally blur or soften images due to the slight movement of your hands. Shooting telephoto in well-lit scenes, this model did an excellent job of minimizing the effects of camera shake. In low-light settings, it performed excellently and almost never produced blurry photos.
SPEED. In terms of performance, the Nikon Coolpix S7000 powers up very quickly.
VIDEO. The Nikon Coolpix S7000 takes good video like many in its class, though some do a little better. It captures full HD video at 1920 x 1080 30p or 60i. As for sound, it captures good audio in stereo.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS. It has HDR (high-dynamic range) settings. Like most point-and-shoot models, this camera does not include a viewfinder, which means you'll need to rely on the LCD to compose your photo or video. Although it has a display with 460,000 pixels, which should make it sharper than most in its class, we didn't find that the display stood out from the pack.
